Cruise

I wonder what my priorities are. I can hardly claim to be able to prioritise properly when nothing really seems particularly important. Very little seems to matter to me. Really. Nobody actually believes me on this point. Escapism is such a wonderful thing. Slip away into a world where people care about something. Someone I can feel through actually feeling something.

I prefer friends whom I can talk to about nothing much in particular. They don't have to know me too well. In fact, it's better that they don't. After all, even those who think they know me are deluded. What people know about me is only a set of assumptions. People assume so many things about me. Things they extrapolate from my actions, my words. Mistaken.

Is pride really all that important to me? Pride is little more than a support, a prop, an armour that keeps me together. Yet, so many think it is part of me. I do not know if it is. Perhaps I am the one who is mistaken, and I am little more than the collection of what I present. That is far more interesting than being what I instinctively am. My gut reactions to things appall me. That too is a gut reaction. Then again, maybe that is only what I present to myself.

I am finally back home. Finally. But I hardly feel anything at all. Home is just another place. How can I feel any real attachment to a place? Perhaps I can. There was a time when I thought that home was this wonderful, mystical place where I longed to be. Now I recognise that is simply not true. What is there to miss here? The people? Strangely, I have little emotion boiling beneath my placid exterior. Not even a matter of coldness, just a bland sort of dullness.

What is the answer to my dilemma? I hold the phone in my hand, thinking about making a call, but give in to my defensive mechanisms and start toying with its functions instead. I simply don't feel up to making any effort these days. Maybe it's time to let the effort come from without rather than within. After all, I don't think there's all that much to give now. There never was, but in the past, I would draw from the shell to expand. Too much effort to do that these days. I need to draw from something. There has to be something outside of myself to feed on, or continual output is just exhausting. I don't feel any emotional feedback. Everyone seems to be asking something of me, and I cannot summon any more at the moment.

When I said I prefer friends who don't know me too well, perhaps I was wrong. I met a friend just now purely by accident, someone I haven't seen in a couple of years. By complete chance, she was at the coffeeshop where I paused to buy a drink. Ended up having an utterly superficial chat about nothing in particular. I heard about life at work, I had my obligatory whine about my work over the summer. No effort required. Then when I walked her back to her flat, feeling a bit sad that there was nothing to talk about for more than half an hour, she just hugged me and said it was good to see me again. I was a bit surprised for a moment, then realised it was nice. The physical grabbing was a bit uncomfortable, but it was a nice sentiment, and I appreciated it. I had done nothing more than let myself do the easiest thing I could do, and it was appreciated. No need to do or say anything interesting, smart, funny, dramatic. Just cruise. But my effort wasn't important. I think I try too hard sometimes to be who I think I am.

I just feel like sleeping for a few weeks, then slipping back into the cocoon of school, where life is simple, socialising is optional and rest is mandatory. Simplicity is so appealing that I don't know why I try so hard.